by Quilt Alliance | Jul 24, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
I’m back from the Quilt Alliance’s Not Fade Away conference. I missed you, OTDHQ fans! On this day in 1982, “Eye of the Tiger”* by Survivor hit the top of the U.S. pop charts. This hit from the third of five “Rocky” films (actor/director Sylvester Stallone) held top billing on the chart for 6 weeks. The first hit from the boxing series was “Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky)*.” *I apologize in advance for leaving these tunes to replay in your head all day! Anna Lee Girard of West Virginia, hand appliqued, pieced and quilted this Tiger Lily (alternately named Meadow or Wood Lily) quilt in 1881. Anna Lee was a housewife in rural Mason county in the central part of the state, and purchased new fabric to create this quilt. The lucky family member who inherited the quilt documented it during the West Virginia Heritage Quilt Search in 1992. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/quoteye-of-the-tigerquot-from-rocky-iii-tops-the-us-pop-charts Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Jul 17, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1955, Walt Disney’s first theme park, Disneyland, opened in Anaheim, California, built for $17 million on 160 acres of former orange groves. Today more than 14 million people visit Disneyland and spend close to $3 billion. Ellen (or Mary) Cline White hand pieced and hand quilted this Sunflower and Orange Peel quilt around 1840. The quilt was made in California but ended up in Tennessee, where it was documented by the Quilts of Tennessee project. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/disneyland-opens Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Jul 16, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1967, comedian and actor Will Ferrell was born in Irvine, California, the son of Betty Kay, a teacher, and Roy Lee Ferrell Jr., a musician with The Righteous Brothers. His parents were both natives of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and moved to California in 1964. Emma Hotchkiss Irvine of Kentucky made this exciting Crazy Quilt in 1883. Emma was a direct descendent, through her father Benoni Hotchkiss, of Ambrose Doolittle, a private from Connecticut during the Revolutionary War. The quilt is now part of the permanent collection of the DAR Museum. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Ferrell Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Jul 15, 2013 | On this Day in History Quilts series
On this day in 1606, Dutch master painter Rembrandt van Rijn was born in Leiden, South Holland, the son of a miller. Rembrandt, who painted more than 100 self-portraits during his lifetime, lost favor as a fashionable portrait artist, and was bankrupt by 1656. However, after this financial downfall, Rembrandt produced some of his most celebrated works. South African artist Phina Nkosi of Soweto, South Africa, made this quilt, titled “Anti-Apartheid Portraits.” It features portraits of women important in the anti-apartheid struggle. This quilt was included in a national exhibition of crafts shown at the Craft Council of South, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2004. It was acquired by the MSU Museum during a bi-national South African Cultural Heritage Project, for which the museum was a lead US partner. View this quilt on The Quilt Index to read more about it’s history, design and construction. Be sure to use the zoom tool for a detailed view. Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rembrandt-born Posted by Amy E. Milne Executive Director, Quilt Alliance…
by Quilt Alliance | Jul 14, 2013 | Uncategorized
Bonjour! Today, July 14th, is Bastille Day–the French national . Browsing the Q.S.O.S. archives, I couldn’t help but notice that there were two interviews from quiltmakers who participated in a project to celebrate the Marquis de Lafayette, the French general. What better day than Bastille Day to share these two quilts and their stories? Kay Marburger shares the story of one of her first quilts: My quilt, Lafayette Hero of Two Worlds, was my very first quilt that I made starting from scratch. I live in Fayette County, the town La Grange [Texas.] and in 2006 the city of Lafayette, Louisiana, decided that the next year they were going to have a big celebration celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette from France, after whom their city was named… My idea was a silhouette of Lafayette standing with his feet apart, one foot in the United States, one foot in France. I started thinking about that, I really had not been quilting that long at that time and I really didn’t have an idea about how to go about doing this, but I just kind of sketched and just kind of drew and then I kind of figured out by looking at maps and kind of tracing the shape of the United States and France and kind of playing around with enlarging things and I got my basic outline, or background design for the quilt. I was going to have Lafayette, water, of course the Atlantic ocean between the United States and France, and the sky in the background above, but I really didn’t want to do all the detail on Lafayette so that’s why I chose the silhouette. I was kind of trying to decide what I was going to use on my quilt, to make Lafayette. Black of course was the first thing that popped into my mind. I just put that down as black, then I decided, “Well maybe I ought to use several different blacks,” and just kind of intersperse them because I had been collecting some water fabrics and some sky fabrics, and I knew that I was going to use a bunch of different water fabrics and a bunch of different sky fabrics. This, like I said, was my first foray into designing my own quilt. Also from La Grange, Texas, Kathi Babcock shares a collaborative quilt that traveled around France before returning to Texas: In 2006 or 2007 our town received an invitation to make a quilt for an exhibit that would be hung in Lafayette, Louisiana in honor of the Marquis Lafayette’s 250th birthday or something, I think it was 250. They sent out invitations to towns that had names associated with Lafayette because he did this triumphal tour and apparently a lot of cities in the United States ended up being named after him. I live in La Grange in Fayette county [Texas.] and La Grange was the name of Lafayette’s château in France and so we’re kind of a double whammy that our town and our county are named for Lafayette. One of the girls in town got really excited about the idea and our town ended up contributing three quilts to the exhibit. I captained this one. There were other people in the group that made blocks but I primarily designed, built, and quilted it and it was exhibited at that exhibit in Lafayette, Louisiana and after that exhibit, it was chosen to go on to, it went to France and it went to six museums in France included the Musée de Toile de Jouy, you know Toile where it was originally made and at that time if you looked on their website, this was the quilt they picked for their website and when that six months was over as it traveled, it came back to the United States and the DAR Museum in Washington, D.C. picked the exhibit up. So it hung at the DAR Museum for a few months before it finally came home to me. You can read more stories about quilts and quiltmakers at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Alliance’s site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
